


A Singular Frequency

by ellebb



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Canon Divergence, Chinese American Characters, Eventually a whole lotta sap, F/M, Ghoul Romance, Ghouls, Hancock/Sole mentioned not focused on, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Long-Distance Relationship, Mentioned but not graphic, Not Canon Compliant, PTSD, Rating is pretty firm, Slow Burn, SoSu's Sister, does this count as that? idk, i just want to love all the ghouls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-08-24 08:13:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8364613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ellebb/pseuds/ellebb
Summary: When Isla, sister of the not-so-sole survivor, pulled out the old military grade two-way radio, she found only silence on the air.  Then she heard a voice speaking a language she’d thought long dead.  By day, she tries to overcome her weaknesses and insecurities so she can help find Shaun.  By night, her conversations with this stranger on the radio give her comfort and hope.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Occurs in an AU where SoSu has a sister that survives, along with several of the Sanctuary Hills residents. Read end note for some thoughts on culture.

Isla gasped, sucking on icy air.  Her lungs clenched from the pain of a hundred thousand microscopic knives.  The world flexed before her burning eyes, sharpening into focus.  The door of the pod -- the _cryo_ pod, she now realized -- lifted with a pneumatic hiss.  Her brain told her body to reach forward and balance herself, but her muscles tightened, cramping terribly, and her joints locked.  Arms cut the white cryo smog as Isla’s body shuddered and fell forward.

“It’s alright, I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

A familiar voice soothed her as Isla trembled, gasping.  Her limbs spasmed involuntarily, and she was cold.  So, so, cold.  Steadier, warmer hands rubbed her back briskly.

“ _Jie_ ,” Isla said, hoarse.

“That’s right, it’s me.”

Isla looked up into her sister’s face, finally.  Evelyn was watching her, her brows drawn in concern and her lips pressed thin.  She looked much as she had just moments ago, when they’d first crawled into what they’d thought were disinfecting pods.  Her hair was still perfectly curled from her appointment at Minnie’s salon just yesterday.  Or had it been days?

“We were _frozen_ ,” Isla said.

“Yes,” Evelyn answered, swallowing.

“How long?”

“I don’t know.”

Something in her tone made Isla look closer at Evelyn.  She saw now bloodshot eyes, pinched cheeks.

“What is it?” Isla asked.

Evelyn looked down, her breath slowing deliberately.

Isla sat up properly.  The room -- the metallic, underground chamber full of cold, steel chrysalises.  Only two pods were open: the one she had just exited and one beside it, Evelyn’s.  Nate and Shaun had been in the one across.  The room was empty, silent.  Just moments ago Vault-Tec scientists had been buzzing around, imparting reassurances while their neighbors, the other residents of Sanctuary Hills had clung to one another, crying or silent, horrified at the giant, richly-colored plume of radiation they’d just seen.  The breath of death that had swept through their hair, shook the golden foliage of the trees.  The room was silent.

“Nate,” Isla said.  She struggled to her feet. “And Shaun.  Why did you get me first?  The baby -- there’s no telling what cryo does to a baby --”

Evelyn’s limp hands slid away from Isla as she stood.  Isla stumbled to the pod across the aisle, wiping condensation from the glass.  Nate was inside, his head slumped at an awkward angle.  His dark skin was speckled with growing crystals of ice.  His arms hung, limp and empty, and --

Isla gasped sharply, pulling back.

A hole.  A black, burnt, and stippled hole was gaping directly on his forehead.  And Shaun -- it was just moments ago, only _moments_ \-- Shaun was not in Nate’s arms.

“Evelyn, something’s happened,” Isla cried. “Something-- Nate, Shaun-- ”

She stared around, and seeing the controls for the pod, she lunged for them.  Hands grabbed her wrists, wrenching her away.

“Don’t,” Evelyn said, low and growling.  Her eyes burned into Isla’s. “Don’t touch it.”

Isla stared at where her sister’s hands gripped her wrists.  Evelyn’s fine fingers, with carefully manicured nails, were trembling.

“Evelyn.  I -- I think Nate’s been hurt.  We need to help him--”

“There’s no helping him now,” Evelyn whispered.

“I don’t understand.”

And then Evelyn told her.  Her sister told her how she’d woken, and watched as Nate was killed and Shaun was taken.  How she had woken, alone, and opened Nate’s pod -- and how the terminal at the end of the hall told the terrible truth of Nate’s vitals, and how she’d closed the pod back, turned the cryo back on, and no one was to touch it.

Isla held her shaking hands to her face, felt tears there.  Evelyn’s eyes were burned dry.  She’d done her crying, and there would be no more; Isla could tell from the growing fury in her eyes.

“But why?  And when?”

“I don’t know,” Evelyn said quietly. “But I’m going to find out.”

Isla grabbed her shoulders, looking into her face.

“We’ll find him.  I’ll help you.  We’ll find Shaun.”

Evelyn stared back.  Her eyes were dark, her mouth hard.  She inhaled sharply and stood.

“First, let’s get the others out of the pods.  Then, we’ll figure out what the hell happened.”

Slowly, they manually overrode the pod controls, catching the inhabitants and letting them adjust as they thawed.  Evelyn, as usual, took the lead.  She knew the names of everyone, while Isla mostly recognized a face here and there.  There was the high schooler and her parents, that Mr. Russell from up the street that Evelyn and Nate often muttered about.  The young-ish guy who lived near the end of the street, and was always home in the middle of the day.  Which Isla knew because she had also been home in the middle of the day.

Middle of the day during the week was so silent in Sanctuary Hills.  Isla loved it.  There were no prying eyes, no pressure to wear her face a certain way, no anxiety - or, less anxiety, anyways.  Sometimes Isla would walk down to the Red Rocket station for a slushie or an ice cream, pushing along Shaun in his blue stroller, and she’d pass by the youngish guy’s house, his car constantly there, and loud jazz spilling from the windows.

But Evelyn knew the neighbors, called them by name as she helped them down from the pods, and helped them thaw their spouses or their children.  She comforted those who were wrecked by the shadow of the plume.  She told each neighbor about Nate and Shaun, asking them if they’d seen anything.  Nobody had, but many were shocked to hear the tale.  Nate and Evelyn were well-liked.  Evelyn knew them all, because that’s who she was.  Motivated, social, a leader.  Chairwoman of the Sanctuary Hills HOA, vice-president of the local association of military wives, member of every welcome wagon, hostess to the neighborhood’s Tuesday bridge club.  Successful lawyer on track for a junior partnership.  A carefully maintained appearance.  That was Evelyn, and Isla followed her lead.

Some of the pods were left alone, the terminals nearby declaring the people inside deceased.  No one could find words when they saw this.

Eventually, they were all out of their pods and gathered in the overseer’s office.  There was a tense moment when they all saw the gun on the desk.  Evelyn quickly scooped it up, checking the chamber as Mr. Russell eyed her, chin jutted.  The others were quiet.  They all looked ridiculous.  Skin-tight, luridly bright blue and yellow suits stretched over their soft, suburban bodies.  It was their faces that showed how terrified they were.  How long had they been frozen?  What was above ground now?  How much damage had the nukes done?

One of the bridge ladies’ husbands  -- a Mr. Callahan -- was reading through the overseer’s logs, the instructions for the vault.  The group was silent as they heard about the end of Vault 111’s caretakers.

“Well.  At least we know it’s been more than 180 days.  The terminal doesn’t have an internal clock?” a woman asked.

“There’s no out-going communications?”

“No,” Mr. Callahan said, tabbing through logs.

“Well over 180 days, I’d say,” Mr. Russell said, narrow-eyed. “Judging by the clean skeletons we saw.”

“And the giant roaches,” the high school girl -- Cindy Cofran -- said, grimacing. “There’s no telling how long it takes to mutate so large, even with all the radiation.”

Her mother -- brown-skinned and dark-haired like her daughter -- beside her shuddered, covering her mouth with a hand.

“There’s no way to get readings of the radiation levels outside?” Mr. Cofran asked.

Mr. Callahan shook his head, but Evelyn stepped forward, straightening and staring at them all.

“It has to be safe enough now,” she said. “The man who took Shaun wasn’t one of us, and definitely didn’t look like a Vault Tec employee.  He had to be from outside.”

“Why would someone come down here just for a baby, though?” an overweight man likely in his late twenties asked, running his hands over his dark hair and his sweat-slicked forehead. “And if he did, did he contaminate the vault with radiation?  What if--”

“I don’t care,” Evelyn snapped. “I’m getting Shaun back.  He’s not down here, so I’m going up there.”

“Now hold up,” a woman, dark with short-cropped hair -- Mrs. Callahan -- said. “You don’t know any of that for sure.  You can’t just open the door and endanger us all.”

Isla swallowed, her body stiffening.  The people around her had become tense, and an undercurrent of fear and anger was washing through them.  Voices were starting to rise.  Isla clasped her hands, stilling them.

“We have to do something,” Ms. Rosa said. “You heard those logs.  There’s no food down here.  Unless you fancy hunting giant roaches.”

“Could be there’s nothing but roaches up there, too.”

“I hate to say,” Mr. Russell snorted loudly. “But I’m with _her_.” He waved vaguely at Evelyn. “It’s not sustainable to live down here.”

“But the All Clear to leave the vault never came--”

“Look,” Evelyn said in a clear and reaching volume. “Why don’t I go up there and take a look around?  Everyone else can go towards the back, and seal off the front.  If I don’t come back in twenty-four hours, you can assume the worst.”

Isla stared. “Evelyn.”

Evelyn shook her head.  Their eyes met, and Isla understood; nothing would stop her from looking for her son, for the man that murdered Nate.  Isla herself was terrified; Shaun was so small and vulnerable.

“I’m coming with you,” Isla stated.  She stepped up to her sister’s side, trying to ignore all the eyes now turned on her.  She looked down at her black leather boots, still shiny and new.  “I said I’d help you find Shaun, so I’m coming with you.”

Evelyn’s hand squeezed Isla’s arm, a gesture of gratitude and reassurance.

“Now hold up,” Mr. Russell interjected, scowling. “Are you taking that pistol with you?”

“There’s no telling what’s up there.”

“It’s our only means of protection.”

“The Vault door is plenty protection,” Evelyn said, her dark upswept eyes turning hard. “And I’m the one with a missing baby.”

“You’re not the only one missing someone, lady,” Mr. Russell snapped.

No one had said anything, but they had all wondered where Mrs. Russell was.  She hadn’t been amongst them, and there were a few empty pods.

Mr. Russell spat. “I’m going up, too.”

“I’m keeping the pistol,” Evelyn stated flatly.

“Fine by me,” Mr. Russell said.

“Hold up, none of the rest of us have agreed to this,” Mrs. Callahan said.

“Let’s take a vote,” Mr. Cofran said.

There were twelve of them, including Evelyn and Isla.  Surprisingly few voted against letting them leave the vault.  So Evelyn and Isla were soon at the gangway leading to the massive, circular vault door they had entered, panicked and wild-eyed.  Now they stared at it in awe.  Unbelievable to think such a monumental thing could ever be moved.

And then Evelyn pulled a Pip-Boy from a skeleton sprawled on the platform, glancing at Mr. Russell, daring him to say something.  He snorted and ignored her.  Evelyn went to the platform’s controls, pulling the interfacing line from the Pip-Boy.  And then they were rising up in the vault’s elevator, and the hatch above them was winding open.  Isla’s throat clenched in fear.  She thought of all the stupid b-films about horrific monsters, deformed and driven mad by nuclear fallout set to a backdrop of melodramatic tin can music.  She clenched Evelyn’s hand.  

She was a little girl again, at _Mama_ ’s funereal, holding _Jiejie_ in one hand, _Baba_ in the other -- _Ba._   _Ba_ had still been in Connecticut, what if --  But that thought would have to wait.

Sudden, white-hot light hit them, and they shied away, covering their eyes.

And they emerged into hell.

-

Isla watched Evelyn’s back as her sister walked down the road, leaving Sanctuary Hills.  Over her vault suit, she was wearing the ragged, filthy coat they had found on the body of a man lying on the bridge into the subdivision.  The pistol from the vault was on her hip along with the dead man’s strange, cobbled together weapon.  Isla hoped this would be enough to protect her from whatever was in Concord.

Codsworth hovered at her side anxiously.  Or as anxious as General Atomic’s finest steel and circuitry could be.  Isla sighed, staring at the rust and dents on Codsworth’s body.  She was being unfair.  The poor Mr. Handy was just as devastated about Shaun and Nate as anyone.  It was just--

It was just horrifying.  To think that over two centuries had gone by in an icy cryo dream.  A mere blink, and the world had morphed into this wasteland.  This purgatory.  Vegetation stilted, turned to sharpness and colorless edges.  The hills were splotched an eerie greenish-gray that not even winter ever saw -- or at least, what winter _had_ been.  Who knows what winter looked like in this world.

“Shall we, Miss Isla?”

Isla turned back towards Sanctuary Hills.  Codsworth rattled and hissed as he floated after her, up the hill.  The subdivision was a ruin.  Everything was collapsed, filthy.  She walked a little faster, her eyes darting from one patch of shadow to another.

Mr. Russell had stalked off to his house as soon as they’d emerged, without a word.  Evelyn and Isla had found Codsworth at what was left of the house, and heard the horrible truth.  He had suggested looking in Concord, and Evelyn told Isla to go back to the vault to let everyone know that her Pip-Boy’s geiger counter said it was safe enough.  Meanwhile, Evelyn would press on, try to find people.  Codsworth would stay with Isla.  Just in case.

Just in case.  Isla stared around, wondering where Mr. Russell was lurking, dreading to see him.  She hated him.  She hated the way his eyes landed on her and her sister.  On their moon faces, their upswept eyes, their soft noses.  They were second generation Chinese-Americans.  And he hated them for it.  Him and that wife of his.  But she was probably dead now.  Her pod, empty.  She hadn’t made it in time.

And no one had said anything, because, really, no one particularly liked the Russells.  Their dogs, and their petty squabbles over block parties with loud music, and their own loud domestic disputes.  Nate once got into it with Mr. Russell, in the middle of the street, not long after Isla came to Sanctuary Hills.  Over Nate gathering “communist trash.”

Isla walked faster.

She reached the vault, her back straight and nerves set on edge from the dreadful silence of the world.  

The vault swallowed her back up.

-

Isla kicked the ruined frame of Evelyn and Nate’s bed to the side.  She bent, gathering handfuls of rotted wood and tossing them out of the way.  The threadbare rug revealed, Isla knelt.  Tugging on a corner, she pulled back the carpet and the padding underneath.  The plywood subflooring framed a steel door -- Nate’s safe.  It looked untouched, even after all this time.

Isla reached for the safe’s dial.  Her sister and brother-in-law had given her the combination in case of emergencies.  The lock disengaged with a click, and Isla swung the solid door open.  Inside were the semi-automatics, still there.

She stared at them.  Licking her lips, her hands hesitated over the safe’s opening.  She should pick them up.  At least one.  The world was no longer safe.  Truthfully, the world before hadn’t been all that safe, but now, who was going to protect her?  Who was going to protect Evelyn and help find Shaun?  There were no police, no military.  No law.  She should reach into that safe and take a gun.

Isla swallowed.  Her hands were shaking.  She pulled them back and held her arms to her chest.  

She couldn’t do it.

She stared at the other items in the safe.  A sheathed combat knife, some thick stacks of cash, yellow and faded documents, and a military grade two-way radio Nate had brought back from one tour.  He’d stolen it, as a joke one night when he and his squad got drunk.  Isla took the knife and tucked it into a boot.  It was something, at least.  Then she bent and grunted as she struggled to pull the hefty radio from the floor safe.

After struggling with it, she got it over the safe’s edge and shut the door, twirling the dial until the lock clicked.  She tossed the carpet back, tugging it underneath the radio.

The rattle and hiss of Codsworth outside had a tempo change, had an added whirr.

“Good day to you!  How can I help you, Mr…?”

“Shelby.  Just Shelby’s alright.”

“Of course, sir!  I’m afraid the missus isn’t in, but I’m sure her sister would be happy to receive you.”

A snort. “You alright, mate?  Little low on the fuel maybe?”

“I assure you, sir, my last diagnostics was sparkling!”

“And how long ago was that, eh?”

Isla pulled the front door open, and it swung clumsily on one hinge.  Codsworth was floating there were the petunias had once been, talking with the youngish guy from the bottom of the street.  The one with the jazz.  ‘Shelby’ apparently.  His dark umber skin took on a not entirely attractive highlight from the weak green-yellow light of the late afternoon.  And he spoke with an English accent, not quite like Codsworth’s but definitely not a cockney or a brogue.  Isla hadn’t realized he wasn’t American.

“Hello,” the man said.

“Hello,” Isla said.

They blinked at each other.  He ran a hand over his wiry hair, short and neat with an undercut.  He cleared his throat.

“I’m Shelby.  Got something I can call you other than Evelyn’s sister?”

He thumbed his nose, his mouth pulling up in a crooked smile.

She shifted. “It’s Isla.”

His hands went to pockets that didn’t exist on his vault suit, so he pulled them across his chest.

“They’re gathering up the street.  Food, hopefully.”

She realized she was hungry.  Isla nodded, and stepped out of the doorway, closing the broken door behind her.  For all the good that was worth.  She and Shelby walked up the street, dodging fallen trees and the huge cracks in the pavement.  Codsworth floated along with them.

Shelby glanced at the robot. “Your Mr. Handy seems a bit off.”

“Codsworth,” Isla said. “He’s been alone for a long time.”

“Yeah,” Shelby said, watching his own feet walk up the broken road. “A long time.”

At the end of the cul-de-sac, by the large tree in the center of the circle, the rest of Vault 111’s survivors were gathered.

Mr. Russell had appeared again.  The others stood in a circle around him, listening to him speak and looking at the couple of crates at his feet.  As they got closer, Isla saw the crates were full of silvery cans.

“-last for so long,” Mr. Russell was saying. “We’ll need to start being self-sufficient.  Now, I have some fortified seed.  But that will take time.  We should send groups out to see if there’s anything worth hunting out there.”

There were murmurs among the group.

The sallow, slightly overweight, young man coughed and spluttered a little.

“Do you mean -- I mean, hunting?  Farming?”

“That a problem for you, DiPietro?” Mr. Russell asked, his flinty eyes dark.

Richard DiPietro looked around at them all.  Shelby shaking his head at him.  The other suburbanites in their awkward stances, the silence all around.

“Do we look like hunters?  Like farmers?  I’m a textbook writer.  Them -- office workers.  All of us, we’re just -- we’re just normal people.”

“Look around you,” Mr. Russell snapped. “You think you can just go down to the Super-Duper and feed your family?  Just go get a job and buy what you need?  Wake up.  You want to survive?  You got better ideas than me?  Go ahead, tell us about them.”

DiPietro backed up a little, his eyes darting down.

“Who decided to elect you as leader?” said Mrs. Callahan.  She stared at him, shoulders thrust back, arms held across her chest.  She had certain angular planes to her face that made her black-eyed stare even more intimidating.

“We should probably wait until Evelyn gets back before we make anymore plans,” Mrs. Cofran said, raising her hands in a gesture of supplication.

“I agree,” said Ms. Rosa.  Beside her, her thick-shouldered, bespeckled son picked uneasily at his vault suit.

Mr. Russell snorted and shook his head.  Still, a fire was built and a dinner thrown together from the canned goods.  It could almost have been a camping trip, if not for the matching blue suits and the deep exhaustion in their faces that reached much further than a night’s rest could fix.  As darkness fell, they dispersed.  Into the ruins of those buildings they had called homes.

Isla spent a restless night, fiddling with Nate’s radio to pass the time.  There was nothing much there; mostly silence.

-

“Welcome to Sanctuary Hills,” Evelyn sighed, pushing her pack off her shoulders and letting it slide to the ground.

“Sanctuary,” Sturges said.

“What?” she squinted at him.

“Sign says ‘Sanctuary,’” Preston said, stepping up beside them.

It was true; time and negligence had worn away the ‘Hills.’

“Years and years this place has been called Sanctuary,” Mama Murphy added in her slow, wandering voice.  Her feet had been just as slow and wandering, and Evelyn had had to restrain herself from just picking the little old lady up in her power armor and running with her.  Although she suspected Mama Murphy’s behavior was more the effects of chem use than age.

The power armor.  _That_ had been an experience.  Evelyn wondered how Nate had standed it; it was like walking around in an elephant’s body.  She’d dropped it off at the deserted Red Rocket station and removed the fusion core; she had picked up at least that much on Nate’s stories.

Evelyn sighed. “Fine.  Sanctuary.”

“Evelyn!”

She turned from her new acquaintances.  Isla was walking quickly down the hill towards them, dark bags under her wide-set eyes.   She had small features: small ears, a small mouth, a small nose.  But there was a slight offset to her face.  It wasn’t immediately noticeable, but the structure of her cheekbones and eye sockets slid unevenly, and the bridge of her nose had a crooked set.  But, her high ponytail and her short bangs bobbing, Isla squeezed Evelyn in obvious relief.

“You’re back,” her sister said.

Evelyn patted her on the back. “I’m back.  And I brought people.”

Isla released her, and Evelyn made a round of introductions.  Dogmeat seemed to please Isla the most.  He whined happily when she rubbed his ears.  The rest of Vault 111’s survivors gathered in the street; they all looked a little haggard and sleep-deprived, but they also still looked healthy overall, with layers of fat and softness and lacking the pattern of bruises and cuts Evelyn had seen on those thugs in Concord.  The raiders.  And the leanness, both physical and spiritual, she saw in the Longs and the others.

Evelyn sighed and went about explaining to the Vault 111 survivors about her experience, what she had learned about the state of the world.  They stirred, horrified.  Evelyn should be horrified, too.  She’d had to defend her life with lethal force.  She’d killed people.  But she was so tired and trying so hard just to keep going forward.

Supplies were divvied out.  Evelyn had made sure to collect a great deal of clothes in Concord.  The bright blue vault suits would not do.  They marked them as soft vault dwellers.  And a vault was a valuable resource.  Who wouldn’t want a safe house built to endure a nuclear war?

Evelyn was surprised to hear that Russell had shared his supplies with the others.  The man was a damn bigot, and had made her life hell with that cellar of his.  It was against the Sanctuary Hills regulations, and as the HOA chairwoman it had been Evelyn’s wonderful task to ‘negotiate’ with him over it.  Jackass.

Still, he’d fed everybody.  And there were apparently plans to begin planting and hunting for food.  It was clear he’d been prepared for this -- shocking exactly nobody.  Evelyn disliked the man intensely, and she didn’t want him anywhere near Isla, but they would need him.  Turns out one man’s crazy conspiracy-theorist-slash-prepper was another man’s leader in a nuclear disaster.

“Mrs. E.”

Evelyn turned around.  Shelby.  Almost thirty, English.  His papers still said he was a RobCo employee, but she knew better.

“What is it, Shelby?” Evelyn asked, eyeing him.

He flicked his head away from the others.  She pursed her lips, but nodded and followed him quietly.  He led her to an out of the way patch of dirt shadowed by the wreck that had once been the Ables’ house.  He cleared his throat, sticking his hands in his mock-colonial coat from the museum.

“Sorry to hear about Nate and baby,” Shelby sniffed.

“Thank you,” Evelyn said simply, a little clipped.

He chewed the inside of his cheek and squinted at her.

“So, ah, this Preston was telling me how there’s still towns.  Cities and like.  Probably nothing like before, but still.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, er,” he paused, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’m sure you’re aware I’m not really much of the nine to five type.  I’m actually--” He smiled. “I’m _actually_ in the business of happiness.”

“Happiness.”

“Yes.  Or I was.  Or I could be.  Still.”

Evelyn pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of her scavenged coat.  Shelby’s eyes shot to them with undisguised hunger.  She offered him one and a lighter.  He lit it, and sighed with relief around a waft of smoke.  Evelyn took a long drag herself as she looked at him.

“I’m a corporate lawyer, Shelby.  Still, I had friends in the prosecutor’s office.  And they had friends in the police department.  So I was familiar with Officer McDermott.  And I know he was familiar with you.”

Evelyn pointed at him with her cigarette.

Shelby smoked, his dark eyes motionless.  He finally sighed.

“Alright.  I’m a chem dealer.  Made fucking bank, too.  And look, I’m here now ‘cause I want to offer my services.”

She cocked a brow at him.

“If there are still cities out there, then there’s still a market.  Maybe an even bigger one.  I dealt more than I cooked, but I still got the recipes on my terminal.  It’s all there still.  And my station out back is usable.  We got a lot of people to feed, and you think Russell’s survival shit’s gonna fly?”

Evelyn flicked her cigarette. “And you need someone to get you ingredients.”

“That world out there is dangerous,” he said. “And you seem pretty good with that pistol.”

She tapped a foot, thinking.  

“Who do you deal to?” she asked.

“No kids, no cocksuckers.  Elsewise, it’s just business.  But I might need help on that front too.  Two centuries sort of puts a strain on your contacts, yeah?”

Life had truly turned bizarre.  She, an ivy-league grad and a respectable lawyer, wife, and mother, was considering becoming a drug dealer.  But there were now seventeen people to care for.  And with few means to do so.

“The profits are for everyone in Sanctuary,” Evelyn finally said.

Shelby hesitated.

“For everyone in Sanctuary,” she repeated.

“Alright, sure,” he sighed. “But I’m not fucking about in the woods, tally ho, tantivy, and all that.”

“I’m sure you’ll find something to occupy yourself.  You have any stock piled up?”

“Gone.  All gone,” he spat. “Probably more’n hundred thousand worth of product, all gone.”

Evelyn sighed. “Okay, give me a list, then.  I’ll see what I can do.”

-

Isla switched the radio on.  She quickly found the channel of ‘Diamond City’; a smattering of popular songs with strange commentary by a very nervous guy.  She listened for a while and then switched to the channel with constant classical music, no commentary.  Nothing new.

It had been almost two weeks since they’d left the vault.  Evelyn left a few days ago.  To help another settlement and to go find this Diamond City, for any information about Shaun.  Isla had stayed behind; Evelyn had been unnerved by her encounters with raiders, and she felt it would be too dangerous to try to protect herself _and_ Isla.  So Isla stayed behind, and Evelyn took Dogmeat with her.

Isla sighed, idly turning the dial with little _tick-tick-ticks_.  There was nothing.  The world was empty.  Silent.  How small everything had become, and how large.  The desecrated land billowed around them, overwhelming and terrifying.  No more constant hum of the t.v.  No more rumble of passing cars.

“- _who might understand-_ ”

Isla jumped.  Had she heard that?  She had been clicking through the frequencies out of habit, hardly paying attention, and then a voice --

Isla swallowed.  Her hand hovered by the dial.  Her fingers touched it, nervous, trembling.  She turned the dial back.

“- _talking to the wind… Foolish, I suppose_.”

She hadn’t misheard.  That was a voice on the channel.  Speaking Chinese.

Isla licked her lips.  She scooted closer to the radio, picking up the transmitter.  She tried to steady her breathing, unclench her throat so she wouldn’t squeak.  Her thumb pressed the transmitter’s button.

“ _Hello_?” Isla said.

Silence.  The radio was silent for a long stretch.  The moment weighed down her gullet, filled her with rattled nerves.

“ _Do you- you understand?_ ”

She jumped when the voice spoke again.  Like watching a jack-in-the-box, rattling with its tinny tune, the building of internal pressure while you waited, waited, waited for the _pop_.  And finally the _pop_ that curled you up like a nervous cat.

“ _Hello_?” said the radio.

“ _Yes_ ,” Isla said, her voice strained to a high pitch. “ _Yes_ , _I do.  Um, but_ …”

She paused, and the voice did not crackle over the radio.  It was a male voice, windy and a little like expensive paper that’s been rumpled, with creases and soft spots, reedy.

“ _But, do you- do you know English_?” Isla asked.

“Yes,” said the radio, so politely. “If you would prefer.”

“Yes,” Isla said.  She swallowed, her thumb pressed against the transmitter’s button.  She let go after a pause, with nothing left to say.

“-sh is not very good.  You will have to excuse me.”

Isla shifted.  She had kept her transmitter on for too long, and the voice had begun speaking.  The radio was two-way, but only one person could transmit at a time.  She would have to release the button immediately after speaking from now on.

“No,” she said. “It’s fine.  I’m sorry.”

“No apology needed,” said the radio quickly.

There was a long pause again.  Who was this person?  They had to be nearby, because the radio couldn’t have too long of a range.  Couple of miles, tops.  But who in the Commonwealth would know Chinese?  In fact, the man on the other side sounded Chinese.  It was his English that was a little heavy with accent.  And there was something else.  A bit of roughness in the voice.  Like a sore throat.

Holding the transmitter close, Isla pressed the button. “Have you seen a baby?  A child?  Or a man--”

Isla described the man who took Shaun as Evelyn had described him to her.  And how-

How Shaun might look, if he were older.  Isla and Evelyn had discussed it, quietly.  There was no telling how long ago that man broke into the vault.  Two-hundred and ten years.  Shaun could be a grown man by now.  He could be dead.

Isla frowned.  They had to keep hope up.  She had to be strong for Evelyn.  She had lost so much.  For now, she would have to forget about the sound of Shaun’s cooing and the light in his little eyes.  So Isla asked after Shaun and his kidnapper, but kept it vague.  Anyone with a working radio could find their channel, and there was no point in inviting undue attention.  The kidnapper might come back.  And she did not know this voice over the radio.  He could be anyone.

“No,” said the radio. “I have seen no child.  No man like that.”

Isla’s thumb hovered over the transmitter’s button.  She swallowed.

“I see,” she said.

Yet another long pause passed between Isla and the radio.  “The radio” she kept calling this person.  As if it was the machine she spoke to and not a living human being somewhere out there.  In a way, it was a relief to know there were people out there.  Beside the Longs, Mama Murphy, Sturges, and Preston.  Yes, they said that there were others, but it was hard not to doubt when one looked out the window.  This world was alien.  It was uncanny, that this was Sanctuary Hills -- but a nightmare version, a sick joke.

The radio was silent, and Isla began to worry the person had gone.

“Are you still there?” she asked.

“Yes,” the person replied.

“Did you…” Isla stumbled, searching for words. “Why are you transmitting on the radio?  Do you need something?”

“Need something?” the person repeated. “I… No.  There is -- nothing.”  Their voice took on a strange, self-deprecating lilt that couldn’t quite be called laughter.

“Oh,” Isla said.

“I will watch for these people you are looking for,” the radio quickly added.  “Such as my-- ah, position allows.”

“Thank you,” she said softly.

“May I contact you on this frequency?”

Isla fiddled with a stray wrinkle in her shirt. “Yes, of course.  If you need anything, please feel free to ask…”

The machine’s speakers crackled with a low chuckle. “It is not much.  Ah, this… my watching.  But thank you.”

They were quiet again.  The evening had grown long, and the darkness was deep in this period before starlight could strain through the irradiated cloud cover.

“It is late,” the person on the radio said.

“Yes,” Isla said. “Um, then… Goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

Isla put down the transmitter, looking at the radio.  She stayed like that, kneeling in the dark, watching the silent machine, and she wondered if the other person was doing the same -- sitting in the residual quietude of that strange, awkward conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've been leery of putting out this story b/c I want to be as culturally sensitive to the characters' identities as I can. However, I am not Chinese-American, or Chinese, so no matter how much I research or fact check there will be areas where my ignorance will show. So, I will be trying to be respectful, and I will tend toward writing about details that I know are true within the Fallout context.
> 
> As far as language goes, anything non-English will be in italics. And I won't be writing Zao quite like the FO4 writers have. Since I don't know Mandarin, or a native Mandarin speaker with English as a second language, I'm not comfortable trying to insert my Google Translate findings just where ever. However, I will use some Chinese if I think it's appropriate.
> 
> That being said, just because I think it's appropriate, doesn't mean it actually is. If I ever make an offense (and this applies to not just Isla and Zao, but also characters like Shelby and Ms. Rosa), whether by actually writing something erroneous or by omitting anything, please, please, please do comment or e-mail me. I will seriously appreciate it.
> 
>  **TL;DR** : I'm not Chinese or Chinese-American (or English, or Mexican-American), so tell me if I get something wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

Zao flipped the worn little switch for the short-range comm radio.  The long-range was still functional, but he hadn’t bothered with it in some time.  Even before mission completion, the relays along the North African coast had gone dark, the directives from above sent by coded telegraph.  The tape in that machine had long been blank, turning brittle with age.  Even if something should come over the line, Zao wouldn’t know what a dash would mean from a dot.  The comm officer had taken to continually staring at the starboard bulkhead in the mess for past few decades.

At least, he thought that that particular mindless one had been… Chen Jianguo?  Chen Jiankang?  He could not remember.  But that one held his arm strangely, and hadn’t the comm officer had a bum elbow?  Zao could not remember.

But he could remember laughing with them all, his crew.  There was always laughter in his sparse, muddled dreams.  Never the screams, the peeling skin.  Those dreams had ended some years ago, about the same time he forgot his mother’s face.

Some years ago.  Some years.  Theme of his life lately.  Or rather of his ‘living’ because that was all he was anymore; he was the act of living, no longer a being that could belong to a ‘life.’

He could not remember his mother’s face, the sound of his father’s voice.

He could remember some things, though.  The fetid summer rain the day he’d passed the exams for the officers’ academy.  The florid taste turned physical memory of white rice in a tea broth, both a flagrant luxury even in his childhood.  The white bitter bloom of the cubans Commodore Sūn gave out during the New Year.  Zao used to hoard those things, make them last until next autumn at least.  Now his greatest luxury was popping a Nuka-Cola now and then.  Just to remember that a taste other than salty fish existed.

Zao pushed away from the radio room’s little chair, working the kinks out of his legs.  The Yangtze’s furniture would be the death of him one day.  Not the mindlessness, but the furniture.  Just slightly undersized for him, economized for a compact sub.  He left the radio room, ignoring a shuffling from the corner, and retreated back to the bridge in the far stern of the boat.  Spending time any closer than necessary to the reactor room made him nervous.

He had a theory that was how the mindlessness began: too much radiation exposure.  Of course, by all rights the entire crew of the Yangtze should have keeled over from a dozen cancers shortly after hitting that mine and the reactor failure.  Instead, they had changed.  And then slowly, slowly, they had changed even more.  The physical decay melted deep enough to ruin minds.

Zao stretched out in the captain’s chair, and eyed the periscope.  It was night; any movement along the lonely stretch of pier near the Yangtze would be desperate creatures scuttling in the shadows, looking for shelter or food, or else thugs who turned their desperation to violent greed.  All of them, victims of--

Of what?  Of him?  Of the Yangtze’s mission?

Yes, that was true.  It was Zao.  It was Zao that had given the order for the tactical nukes, and the five SLBM.  Nevermind that the sixth never left its silo.  Nevermind why it didn’t.

But it was also true that Zao had not been alone.  That he had been a different man then.  He had actually _been_ a man; what word could name what he was now?  It was also true that it had been some years since the great fires.

Some years.

Zao pulled himself toward the periscope, rolling on his chair.

A baby and a bald man.  He paused, thinking.  The girl had sounded sincere.  Not like someone hunting for technology or firepower.  But that might be wishful thinking.  The last one to go had been Ensign He Yong.  And even toward the end, all the ensign wanted to discuss was the scent of fresh radroach.  So maybe he was a little excited to finally speak to someone again, and have an intelligible reply.

Even if that reply was in English.  Zao could not say exactly why he hadn’t used English in the first place.  After all, the nearest radios were all owned by the leftovers of America.  He knew why he had _used_ the radio -- it had, after all, been many years since Ensign He had waxed poetic about nuclear roaches.  But the English?  It was… It was like his thoughts could not exist without his native tongue.

If he was going so far as to admit his loneliness, he might as well say it in a way that felt real.

Zao flipped the infrared on the periscope, scanning the dark shore.  That girl… something about her voice.  About the parsing of her words, her pronunciation.  He couldn’t place it and had been too excited at the time to think much.  How had she come to be?  A girl that could apparently speak Mandarin competently, here in this wasteland, a cadence that should be far and away.  If not extinct completely.

A girl in search of lost loved ones.  Another victim of the bombs.  And here he was, promising to keep an eye out.  Ha!  An eye fixed to the same stretch of pier and broad sea spray that it had watched for years and years and years.

Zao pulled away from the periscope.  The brewery facing the bay was dark, and the little shack where the boy lived was silent.

He glowered around the bridge.  Still and empty.  As it had been since forever.  He could not hear laughter.  He could not even hear screaming.

-

Isla closed the manual, idly picking black dirt from underneath her nails.  Evelyn had an idea about Isla learning how to reload ammo; Russell had included the task as one of the essentials now, but at some point his garage had been ransacked and his reloading press stolen.  Evelyn was on the lookout for one in the wasteland -- along with a plethora of other equipment needed -- and until then Isla was studying the mechanics of refilling and resetting used cases.  It was an involved and potentially dangerous process, so Isla was taking her time.

It was something she could do to protect Evelyn out there, and potentially help Sanctuary.

She stood up from the cracked and warped kitchen table, and lifted her hands to tug at her ponytail, tightening it.  One day that elastic tie would wear out, or snap, and she might have to change the way she wore her hair.  Another thing to change.

She left the house, and closed the patched front door behind her.  People were already gathered up in the cul-de-sac’s circle, mostly everyone it looked like.  She could already smell the canned beans being reheated, and the fumes of the rough campbread made from freeze-dried super durable millet flour.  Tinned peaches in sticky syrup.  For a month she’d tried not to think about street noodles with an egg on top, or garlicky, salty sausages snapping happily in pork fat, or thick, creamy milkshakes, pink and sweet from summer strawberries.

Isla stifled a sigh.

Maybe once the planting produced results, and the Vault survivors could shoot the broadside of a barn, the meals would improve.  Maybe.

She neared the communal cooking station in the circle.  Near the beginning, the Vault survivors would greet each other at each meeting, like waving as a car passed through the neighborhood.  But gradually their eyes had gone glazed and distant from the rationing, and their skin mottled with dirt.  Their skin changing and their bodies morphing, slowly they were evolving into a new racial identity -- wastelanders.  Now, neighbors briefly glanced at her as she passed.

Isla retrieved her share of dinner, and sat on the curb by Shelby and DiPietro.  

“C’mon, Dicky,” Shelby was cajoling Richard DiPietro.  They acknowledged Isla, Shelby grinning thinly, and DiPietro squinting up uneasily.  Squinting uneasily seemed his knee-jerk reaction to everything.  That and nervous chewing on his lips.

“I’m just saying,” Shelby said, stirring viscous bean mixture around on his tin plate. “Things ain’t so bad.”

“Not so bad,” DiPietro said flatly.

“Okay.  Well, yeah, maybe that’s a load of cock,” Shelby shrugged. “Or rather, world’s gone to shit, but humans are elastic.”

“Elastic.”

“Yeah.  Elastic.”

“Look around, Dicky, my man.  Right here we have a fine tableau of human adaptation.  Social lines that were quite severe before the bombs have evolved and readjusted for our new environment.”

Shelby grandly swept his arms out toward the cul-de-sac, a game show hostess gesture.

“Poor clever sod that he is, young Louis over there now spends his luncheon with the charming Cindy.”

Indeed, Louis Rosa and Cindy Cofran had taken to grouping together, even though Isla suspected that had probably sat at much different lunch tables in school.  Cindy was bright and inquisitive, likely a part of a half-dozen afterschool clubs.  Louis kept his thoughts to himself, sliding his spectacles up his nose as a nervous tic.  Isla vaguely remembered Nate talking about “the Rosa kid” and his dead father, killed in action.

Shelby continued, “Our respectables, of course, are dining together.  Preserving a semblance of generational hierarchy.”

He waved where Ms. Rosa, the Cofrans, and the Callahans sat on the ground, looking very strange with their mismatched clothes -- ancient rags combined with museum costumes.  They did not look like office managers, teachers, and lawyers.  The lawyer was Mrs. Callahan.  She and Evelyn had worked in similar circles, but there had always been tension between them during Tuesday bridge.  Now, Mrs. Callahan nursed tensions between Evelyn, Russell, and Marcy Long -- anyone with a personality to rival hers.

“Our noble leader regales Mr. Garvey there with doubtless _fascinating_ tales of his tin supply.  Such a picture does warm my heart, knowing the matters of our community are competently dealt with.”

Russell was indeed seated with Preston and Sturges, talking low.  Isla thought the Minuteman looked a little overly polite while Russell bulled along through whatever animated discussion he was inflicting on Preston.

Despite himself, DiPietro chuckled a little.  Isla choked on laughter, too, holding a hand to her smile.

Shelby grinned at her.

“And the kind and virtuous Isla deigns to endure our brutish manners, good Dicky.”

Isla pursed her lips, trying to stifle her continued smile.  With Evelyn gone more often than not, she had taken to eating with Shelby and DiPietro.  Well, at first Shelby, but DiPietro came with the package in the quasi-friendship with the Englishman.  Apparently they had known each other before the bombs.

“See?” Shelby asked, waving his sauce-covered spoon. “Social lines disrupted and reforming.  Elastic.  Humans adapt to anything.  Even shit worlds with tinned beans from sunup to sundown.”

DiPietro half-heartedly stabbed at a neon orange peach slice. “Basically, I should just get used to it.”

“Well,” Shelby mused, almost serious looking. “Yeah, basically.”

DiPietro stared at him skeptically. “I guess I’d be cheerful, too, if I was in your line of work.”

Shelby coughed, spluttering on purified water.  He elbowed DiPietro, elbow sinking into soft flesh, and glanced pointedly at Isla.  She lowered her scrap of campbread.

“I already know, Shelby.  Evelyn’s sister, remember?” she said.

His dark skin flushed. “Oh, yeah.  Guess she told you to warn you off low society and all?”

“Yes,” Isla said seriously. “I have strict instructions to cross the street whenever I see you.”

Shelby laughed awkwardly.  Like he wasn’t sure if she was serious or not.  Isla offered up a tepid, reassuring smile.

Evelyn _had_ told her about Shelby’s cooking chems, not to warn her away from him, but mostly to complain about finding all the supplies he needed.  Most things were normal household items, but the places you’d usually find cleaning supplies, over the counter meds, etc., had already been emptied or were impassable from debris or hunkered down raiders.  Evelyn had also told Isla to keep Shelby’s activities to herself, knowing that the other suburbanites would not be as understanding.  Russell especially.

Russell had already complained about Shelby’s skipping out on field duty, repair work -- basically any sort of work at all.  Marcy Long, too.  She was already quite vocal about the vault survivors being clumsy with all the physical labor.  Still, Evelyn didn’t want anyone knowing that Shelby was making chems until his supply was reliable, and she had chains of distribution for selling them.  Until the money was there, Evelyn didn’t see the point of endangering the budding business.

Shelby elbowed DiPietro again, to cover the awkwardness, and they spent the rest of dinner daydreaming about ice cream and cake.

-

Isla had left dinner early, as her habit had become recently.  She used to be the first one to leave meals, but now the others gradually went to bed earlier and earlier, eager for the oblivion of thin pallets and moldy blankets.  Isla, however, was starting to go to sleep later and later.

At first, Isla had just contacted the person she’d spoken to before every few days, making short enquiries on their seeing anything new related to Shaun.  But then one night, the other person had lingered and made small talk.  The particularly ugly green of the day’s sunset.  The searing rain the one day that had apparently stirred the bay into a froth.  A battle that had lasted a whole night between rival gangs in the business district that he warned her about.  Every few days had turned to every night, and sometimes Isla came back to the house with the radio crackling with white noise.

On one level, Isla felt she should be wary.  Small comments about particular locations could reveal her specific location, and Sanctuary was still vulnerable, most of the inhabitants unfamiliar with guns.  There were the others to consider, let alone her own safety.  She _should_ be wary, but she just… She couldn’t help letting her guard down a little.

The person on the radio did not know her, had no expectations or preconceptions of her.  They seemed only to want to talk a little.    And, the safety liability went both ways.  For all he knew, she could be a lure for a larger group.  So they’d both been careful in their wordings, so… Maybe it was naive to think so, but she felt maybe it was okay.  They shared a language, so maybe it was okay.  Although, they hadn’t spoken anything other than English since that first conversation.

His English was a little thick, peppered at times with vocabulary vacancies, which Isla supplanted helpfully.  But Isla’s own Mandarin was touched with thickness; English had been her primary language for most of her adult life.  She had used Chinese at home, but even then Evelyn tended toward English.   _Ba_ had used a combination.  It was only a few years ago that Isla’d had a chance to speak her parents’ tongue on a daily basis.

She picked up her reloading manual from the kitchen table, and entered the back bedroom.  She closed the door behind her and pulled down the rags that covered the larger holes in the walls.  An emergency flashlight propped on the dresser was her only light source.  She knelt by the radio, tucking her feet underneath her.

The dial turned by memory to the frequency she wanted.  Holding the transmitter, she pressed its button.

“Hello?” Isla said.

A pause.  And then the familiar soft snaps of another radio on the air.

“Hello,” said the radio.

This was how it always began.  Their slightly tentative hellos, and the pause afterward.  The waiting for the other to break the silence first.

Isla cleared her throat.

“Anything?” she asked.

“No, nothing,” he said.

The question was more ritual than anything now.  The last she’d heard (from the various companions her sister was gathering), Evelyn had hired some sort of detective in Diamond City to help track Shaun and the kidnapper.  Still, Isla asked her radio companion the question, and she scanned the other frequencies for something.  Anything.

“I--,” Isla stopped.  She lifted her thumb off the transmitter.

Another long pause.

“Yes?” prompted the radio, gently.

“No-- nothing.  Sorry,” she squeaked.  She quickly released the button, groaning at her own awkwardness.  She was thankful the transmitter only worked with its button depressed.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “ _Nothing_.”

His tone turned light and overly understanding.  Isla went pink.

“I happen,” said the radio, “to know a great deal of nothing.  I could help.”

Isla opened her mouth, closed it.  She spluttered a moment, forgetting to reply.  The pause stretched.

“Hello?” he asked.

“I--,” Isla started.  She realized she hadn’t turned on the transmitter.

“I…” she restarted. “I know I keep asking, but… I just -- I just wish there was more I could do.”

She chewed on the admission, continuing before she lost her nerve.

“My sister -- it’s her son.  My nephew,” Isla said. “We’ve… lost a lot.  She -- my _Jiejie_ \-- has always been strong for me.  And I just wish I could do more for her.  I wish I _was_ more.”

Isla exhaled.  There was more she could say, more she could admit and release into the ether, but this was all for now.  What she said said a lot, she felt.  Her words were not said lightly, and the pause between the radio and her weighed heavy.  For so long, she had kept so much to herself, and to say at least this loosened the tight, tangled coil that lived inside her.

The radio hummed along to itself.

Her cheeks burning, Isla said into the transmitter, “I’m sorry, I…”

“--to apologize.  It must be difficult.”

He had tried to interrupt her while she was still transmitting.

“If I may,” he continued hesitantly. “May I ask a question?  It is maybe… You do not need to answer.”

“Go ahead,” she said.

“This is America,” the radio said slowly. “What is left of it.”

Another long pause.  She was wondering if he was still there when he continued.

“How do you come to know… Chinese?  It would be… gone from here.  For a long time.  Did you learn it, some way?  Or are you--”

He stopped abruptly and was silent.

Isla shifted. “You sound as if-- as if you were from China.  But… that doesn’t seem possible.”

They were dancing around each other, poking at something that she couldn’t discern.

“I--” he said with slow deliberation. “I am not from here.  I came many years ago.  But I changed.  I am a _ghoul_ , they say now.  Are you… as well?”

Isla frowned and sat back on her heels.  Ghoul?  What did that mean?  And what did it have to do with somehow traveling thousands of miles in the midst of a technological vacuum?  And for what purpose?  Could there still be governments plotting violence against one another?  Even after everything they’d already done?  Could… could ‘ghoul’ be some sort of codename?  She felt a new nervousness rise in her stomach.

Isla did not know what to say, and she allowed the silence to stretch beyond socially acceptable limits.

“You do not have to answer,” his voice said.  His tone held an eagerness to reassure.

He continued, “I should not pry.  I apologize.”

“No, I…” Isla trailed off.

Neither had much to say after that, and shortly after said their good-byes, letting the frequency lie quiet for the night.

-

In the morning, Isla straightened her clothes out: a knotted, loose sweater, a faded skirt that might have been plaid at some point, and a pair of legging/pant-things made of some kind of worn animal hide.  She had no mirror to inspect herself, but that might be for the best.  Until the water purifier by the creek was finished, water was rationed and bathing and laundry were an obscene luxury.

Leaving the house, she turned down the road, making sure Marcy Long didn’t see her when she passed between a wreck of a house and Sturges’s workshop.  She’d be late to work in the fields, but it wouldn’t be the first time getting chewed out by Marcy.

She found Preston just outside Sanctuary, gazing across the bridge and down the road.  Occasionally he’d walk with his long stride from one side of the broken cement to the other, his great laser musket swinging wide arcs.  The Minuteman looked up as she approached and tipped his hat to her.

“Good morning,” Preston said.

“Morning,” she answered.

She was close enough to be aware of how short she stood compared to him.  Her back to the cobbled-together guard tower (really a platform), Isla peered up at him.  He was nice; pleasant to all, and helpful with the vaulties.  Evelyn had apparently asked him to look after her sister, and he frequently stopped her in passing to ask about the planting, etc.

Isla swept a hand through her bangs, trying to find her words.

“I have a question,” she said.

Preston tilted his head, smiling. “Okay.”

“Um, what-- what exactly is a ghoul?”

His brows rose toward the brim of his hat. “A ghoul?  Well…  The radiation levels are much higher now, right?  Sometimes it affects people worse than others.  Their skin changes and the rest of their body, too.  They lose their nose.  They end up looking really different, but they live a lot longer than smoothskins-- that’s what they call everyone else.  Radstorms don’t make them sick.”

Preston thumbed his hat.

“But,” he continued, “Sometimes something goes wrong with ghouls.  They go feral.  Act like monsters and attack anything that moves.  Those are dangerous.”

Isla frowned.  That seemed… impossible.  Well, she _had_ seen bloatflies and stingwings lazing off in the woods and over the creek.  And there were the enormous radroaches.  But, mutated people?  Like a movie or something.  Was that what the person on the radio was?  A ghoul?  And he thought she was, too?

Isla’s brow wrinkled.

“Wait,” she said. “They live longer?  How much longer?”

“Well.  I’ve met a few that were pre-war.  Supposedly they could live forever.”

“Oh,” she said.

Preston watched the shift in her expression.

“Not much stranger than sleeping two hundred years in cryo, I think,” he said.

“Basically--”

Isla jumped violently; the voice above her head was loud and sudden.

“They look as shite on the outside as most people are on the inside.”

Isla looked up into Cait’s freckled, smirking face.  She hadn’t even realized the woman was in the guard tower.  Unusual considering how loud Cait could be and how large her presence seemed even at her quietest.

“Right, Preston?”

“I guess that’s one way of putting it,” the Minuteman said, eyeing Cait.

He turned back to Isla.

“Any particular reason for the curiosity?” he asked.

“It was just something I heard,” Isla said in what she hoped was a natural tone of voice.

She had not told anyone about her radio… _companion_ or whatever he was.  She hadn’t even told Evelyn.  She was afraid of appearing foolish when it seemed like strangers couldn’t be trusted in this world, couldn’t be trusted with even some bits of small talk.  And she didn’t want the other settlers to accuse her of endangering the community, even though she herself was not positive that wasn’t in fact what she was doing.

Isla cleared her throat.

“Well, thanks, Preston,” she said, trying to keep her pitch under control. “I’m late, so I’ll see you around.”

Preston blinked, but nodded with a tenuous smile.  Isla turned back up the street, but heard combat boots stomping down rough-hewn stairs coming after her.

“Hold on, I’ll go with you,” Cait said.

“Cait, you’re on duty!”

“Stuff it, Garvey.  Ain’t a fuckin’ thing comin’ o’er that bridge.  Let me keep a bottle or two up there and we’ll talk.”

Isla paused to raise a brow at Cait. “I’m just going to work in the field.  Pulling weeds.”

The redhead shrugged her broad, bare shoulders. “Anything is better’n sittin’ on me arse up there all day long.”

Isla returned her own shrug and started back up the hill.

“I’d go help that Shelby -- least what he does is interestin’ -- but he’s a piece of shite.”

Cait knew?  Well, maybe she was buying from Shelby.  Still, for something that -- according to Evelyn -- should be hush-hush, it sure was spreading around.  And Isla wasn’t surprised that Cait was cursing Shelby; he had already made the mistake of questioning her accent.  Cait wasn’t pleased.  Even though Isla would also like to know how an Irish woman had gotten to this side of the pond.  But she wasn’t about to go asking.  She could see the size of Cait’s deltoids, same as everyone else.

“I’ve never been one for-- y’know.  Crops ‘n stuff,” said Cait.

“Umm,” Isla mumbled. “It’s not difficult or anything.  At least, not what they have me do.”

They were approaching the loosely fenced off area where the others were bent over rusty hoes and makeshift trowels.  Isla tried to avoid the Marcy’s eye, skirting around the woman bent over some prickly, mutated weed.  But she was spotted anyway.  Yet the sharp gaze turned sour when it spotted Isla with Cait; it seemed that Marcy could also see the size of the redhead’s deltoids.

Isla spent one third of the morning digging out stubborn weeds, one third keeping Cait from mistakenly hacking at the tender sprouts of the actual crops, and another third trying to cover for DiPietro.  He was thinner than when they had first stepped out of the vault, but he tired easily and even the relatively easy labor of digging up weeds left him heaving and sweating a river, despite the coolness of the day.

Finally, Cait got fed up with the situation.

“Just go set yerself outta the way, you damn lardass,” she spat, snatching his tools from him.

“‘N’  _you_ \--” she waved at Isla. “Stop babying him.  Never gonna toughen up like that.”

DiPietro was too pale and breathless to protest.  He tottered off to slump in the shade.

Isla watched nervously as Cait attacked DiPietro’s tasks herself.

Cait puzzled her.  An ex-prizefighter.  Loud, fond of drink and chems and not ashamed to let you know it, either.  Ever since coming to Sanctuary, Cait had done pretty much as she pleased and only went to work on one task or another with much grumbling and not a few curses.  So Isla was not sure why it was that whenever Cait spotted her, she would follow along to meals or to work like this.  Isla had not actively sought out her friendship, and really didn’t think herself the sort of company Cait enjoyed.  It puzzled her, so later that evening, over tasteless canned green beans and even blander millet bread, she finally asked her about the attention.

Cait chewed on a large bite of food, looking at her.  Isla could hear Shelby laughing about something behind them, a comfortable distance from Cait’s fists.  The woman kept chewing and looking at her, until she finished the bite and went in for another generous mouthful.  The hard green eyes went down to her plate.

Isla waited, but after a while thought Cait hadn’t heard her.  She opened her mouth, but the other woman coughed.

“I seen a lotta people come from where I’m from,” Cait said. “Sometimes-- sometimes they end up like me.  All big and loud and angry.  Like all they are is a big gut wound that goes bad and y’get so feverish you’re sure you’ve got to burn everything just to survive.”

Cait played with her food, the plate sitting on the ground beside her and each tap of her spoon sending up tiny puffs of dust.

She continued, “But sometimes I seen ‘em end up like you, too.  They get so small like they think they could just vaporize themselves and where they’re from.  Just if they get small enough.  But ya can’t get small enough.  Ya can’t get big enough, neither, to fix it.”

Cait was hunched a bit now, her proud, broad shoulders hunched like she wanted to roll with whatever punch was coming her way.

“I dunno how to fix it,” Cait admitted.

Isla couldn’t say anything.  She just watched as Cait’s freckled face transitioned from anger to embarrassment to something like sorrow.  Finally the redhead huffed.

“I’m a fine fuckin’ friend, n’ your lucky to have me,” she said loudly, trying to cover the moment back over, like it hadn’t happened.

Isla coughed.  She’d never had a friend quite like Cait (or like Shelby or Preston for that matter).  But she found she didn’t hate the idea as she watched the other woman go back to her food with an alarming viciousness, her freckled ears turned red.

-

Isla closed the bedroom door, and went through her nightly rituals.  The flashlight, the rags over the holes in the walls.  Then she knelt on the floor and slid toward the radio.  She licked her lips.

A ghoul.  That had come here “many years ago.”  He _was_ natively Chinese; she was sure of that now.  But did that mean… Did it mean that he was from before the war?  That he had survived the bombs?  But if that was true, why was he here?  The government had long since removed Chinese immigrants from society.  Her own family had barely escaped the camps and had endured heavy surveillance.

She was growing a suspicion about why anyone Chinese would be in the Boston area, but she was afraid to voice it even to herself.  She had thought this a harmless diversion, just a bit of small talk with someone she had something in common with.

But then -- it had been many years.  Even if it had only been a handful of weeks for her.

Isla stared at the radio, not reaching for the power dial.  Should she ask or just leave it for now?  Should she even continue speaking to him?  She hesitated.  And she hesitated and hesitated.

Until it was over an hour past the usual time frame of their conversations.

Finally, Isla inhaled and set her shoulders.  Maybe she wouldn’t ask tonight, but she would at least say hello.  It was for Shaun, yes, but also for herself.  She did not want to stop talking to him just because she was afraid of what she didn’t know.

Isla picked up the transmitter and carefully turned the radio’s power dial.

And she yelped loudly when the radio’s little lights flashed, some mechanism sparked with a metallic _pop_ , and the resultant sparks spilling from the machine bit at her fingertips.

Isla jerked her hand away, eyes watering.  She stared at the radio.  It was dim and quiet.  She toggled the power dial again.  And again.  And again.

No use.  The radio was dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cait and Isla's friendship is so important to me. Also, thanks for reading~


	3. Chapter 3

Isla couldn’t help herself; she stared.

She stood not far from Sanctuary’s entrance, watching as Shelby fussed while his first sellable batches of jet, psycho, med-x, etc., were divvied up and stowed in four separate packs.  Cait stood beside her, yelling out unhelpful suggestions.  The mercenary MacCready sat on a tree trunk, stretching out his legs and chatting with Preston.  Preston watched the proceedings with resignation; the water purifier needed a large, expensive component to be completed.  And Sanctuary needed the caps the chems could provide to buy it.

And Isla stood staring at the men hired to transport the chems.  Four of them, but it was three that snared her attention.  Mottled, ropey, craggy skin stretched like a drum over bony hands and lean skulls.  One nose between the four of them.  Strange eyes, overblown or red shot.  Atrophied limbs.

These were ghouls, then.

McCready had led them here, from a town called Goodneighbor, on Evelyn’s orders.  They had colorful names: the Lee brothers, Hiraj, Six-Fingers.  And they all had well-handled, well-worn weapons strapped to their backs and hips.  And they all had adroit eyes that took in unknown details, that measured deliberately.  Dangerous eyes.

Isla broke her stare when one of the Lee brothers stared back.  Red blown, bluebell cap.

She was aware of the Vault survivors holding back their own curiosity, staying far back up the broken road.  Before the appearance of these ghouls, the unmentioned yet unavoidable thing -- the thing that pervaded nature, so impermeable and immutable before -- was now not only within the monstrous insects and that two-headed deer Mrs. Callahan had shot.  It was in the humans, as well.  The natural hierarchy was disturbed.  The world was changed, and the suburbanites were still too delicate, too queasy.

Isla set her shoulders.  She approached the log MacCready and Preston sat on.  Cait followed with a yawn.

“Which one’s going back to Goodneighbor?” she asked.

MacCready squinted at her.  He looked tired, ready for his first night off the road in some time.  The merc waved toward the other mercs.

“The Lee brothers.”

“Evelyn’s still there, right?”

“Far as I know.  If not, someone'll know where to reach her.”

Cait slapped MacCready on the shoulder.

“Y’git what I asked?” she said, grinning.

He grimaced and rubbed where she hit him. “Jeez, go easy on me.  I got a bad recoil bruise there.  F-freaking pipe rifle.”

Still, he dug through his pack and fished out a bottle of dark brown liquid.

“You’re an angel,” Cait cooed, taking the bottle.

“I aim--”

“Don’t you fuckin’ dare,” she cut him off. “Holy Jesus, you use that line one more time, MacCready--”

Isla walked away from the squabble and approached the two ghouls MacCready had pointed out.  They blinked their alien eyes at her, and she made herself smile.

“If you’re going to Goodneighbor,” Isla said, “Can you give this to Evelyn?”

She held out a carefully folded little bundle of old newspaper.  Inside was a message and a drawing in red wax crayon of a pre-war military transformer.  The message was from her, and the drawing had been helpfully supplied by Sturges.  She’d taken her radio to Sturges, and after tinkering it with it a bit, he’d said that the transformer had gone bad.  None of the ones he had on hand fit the big military radio.  And a trader hasn’t stopped by in weeks.  So Isla’d gotten Sturges to put down a diagram of the needed part and written to ask Evelyn to keep an eye out.

The Lee brothers looked at her little bundled up message.  They were hairless; nothing peeked out from under their caps, and they lacked eyebrows.  Add to that the rough skin, and the-- _ghoulishness_ made for faces that were not easily read.  But she guessed that the shift around the shorter one’s eyes, and the pull of his incredibly thin lips was a friendly expression.

“Can do,” he said, taking the message from her.

“Who from?” asked the other one.

“Isla.  Her sister,” she said.

The message was tucked away, and the packs were hefted back high.  The two turned to the road, waving at Shelby and MacCready.

“Thank you,” Isla called. “Have a safe trip.”

“Sure,” said the shorter one, acknowledging with a wave.

Isla relaxed as she watched the group leave Sanctuary.  And then jumped when Cait jostled her, draping her arms over her shoulders.

“Thinkin’ a’ goin ghoul are ya?” Cait sniggered.

Isla ducked out of the taller woman’s arms.

“Don’t you have a bottle to keep company?” she retorted.

Cait laughed. “That’d smart a bit more if you didn’t pout every time you backtalk.”

“I’m not pouting,” Isla pouted.

“They looked tough, right?” Shelby asked anxiously, sidling close. “Like they won’t get hit over the head in some alley and mugged, right?”

Cait shrugged. “Probably?”

“ _Probably_?”

The redhead laughed, “I’m just takin’ the piss outta ya--”

Sighing as they bickered, Isla walked away, back up the hill.

It had been a week since her radio had broken.  A week since she’d lost her nightly conversation partner.  As the days went by, her own listlessness and growing unease astonished her; she hadn’t realized how much she had come to look forward to the bits of small talk.  It wasn’t like they’d ever talked about anything important.  The weather.  Sounds off in the distance.  The color of the bay.  But Isla found herself leaving dinner with nothing to look forward to but a dark ruin of a house and silence.  At one time, an empty, quiet house was all that she wanted.  Now, she acutely felt Nate and Shaun’s absence.  She envied Evelyn in some ways; at least she was moving with a purpose.  All Isla could do was wait until she was told to do otherwise.

Maybe that was part of her thing with the radio.  It was something she’d chosen on her own, something that only she knew about.  That’s why she needed to get back on that frequency.  She worried that he thought her rude, that she was ignoring him.

But she would have to wait.  For a military-grade radio transformer to pop out of the ground, or something.

-

It was another whole week later before Isla’s sister returned, toting the part for her radio amongst a plethora of other items requested by Sanctuary’s residents.  Sturges -- or rather, Sturges’s new assistant, Louis Rosa, got the radio working again the same day.  But Isla was occupied with catching up with Evelyn the rest of the day, and following the Minuteman General around Sanctuary as she inspected the improvements.

Evelyn had brought with her another ghoul, this one dressed in a red frock coat and calling himself ‘Hancock.’  The people of this time certainly had a knack for theatrics.  He spent the day wandering around, sometimes with Evelyn, sometimes on his own, introducing himself and cracking jokes.  When Isla met him, he’d said:

“Hunh.  Guess that makes you _Little_ Sister.”

Whatever that meant.  Evelyn just rolled her eyes and jostled him on.

As night came on, Isla felt somewhat terrible for feeling lucky that her sister could no longer bear to sleep in the old house.  She was using one of the abandoned places while Isla used the old house.  So she didn’t have to explain about her radio usage just yet.  Even so, Evelyn had already given her a _look_ over her insistence on fixing the thing.  Isla would have to be careful; her sister was sharp.

The gaps in the walls had been patched up in the time since she’d first occupied the house.  Reoccupied, anyway.  So she could dispense with the ritual of draping rags over holes, and quickly scooted over to her fixed radio.  ‘Hers.’  Already, she’d started thinking of it as belonging to her, and not to Nate.

Isla put that thought away, hesitating just a moment, and flipped the radio on.  White noise floated over the air.  She pressed the transmitter’s button.  

“Hello?” Isla said.

She released the transmitter, and waited.  And waited.

Honestly, she was worried.  She’d been thinking about it often, inbetween the rote labors of weeding -- the last time they’d spoken.  She had let her awkwardness and indecision kill off their conversation.  And then fate decided, for some reason, to break her radio.  He probably thought she’d been offended by being asked if she were a ghoul.  Or, maybe he even thought she’d stopped speaking to him because _he_ was a ghoul.

Isla hated that; as far as she could tell, ghouls merely looked different.  She hadn’t seen a ‘feral’ yet, but…  It didn’t matter to her.  She didn’t want him to think that she would be that narrow-minded.  Not for the first time in her life, she wished she was quicker on the uptake, that she didn’t fumble with her words.  If she’d only been able to say the right thing the last time she’d spoken to her radio companion…

Isla’s throat tightened with the anxiety of the long wait and her own thoughts.  She attempted to relax and tried the transmitter again.

“Hello?” she said.

“Yes?” the radio suddenly crackled, its tone harried and flustered. “Hello?”

Relief flooded Isla’s limbs.  She sat back, suddenly aware of the tension in her spine and muscles.

“H-hello,” she said. “I wasn’t sure if-- I mean, I know it’s been a while…”

She faltered.

“No matter,” he said, something that might have been his own relief conveyed even over the radio’s crackle. “No matter.  I am merely glad of a chance to apologize.  I was rude the last time we spoke.”

“No!” Isla exclaimed.  She flinched and her own hand flew up to her lips.

“What I mean is,” she started again, calming her voice. “Is you don’t have to apologize or anything.  My radio broke two weeks ago.  The transformer.  I only just fixed it.  I never-- I never felt…”

A long pause grew between them.  Isla licked her lips and wondered if she should break the silence first.  But she didn’t trust herself to not stumble over her words even more.

“I am glad that you’re here again,” the voice said warmly. “That I did not offend you.  And you are well.  That most of all.”

That was something Isla hadn’t considered.  That one of them could be hurt or worse, and the only signal to tell the other would be silence over the frequency.  She probably should have; the wasteland was brutal, and it likely wasn’t unusual for deaths to occur suddenly and frequently.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to worry you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it couldn’t be helped.”

“Yes.  Um, but I am glad, too.  To have my radio back.”

Another pause extended between, and Isla bit her lip against the smile that had come, unbidden, to her face for no apparent reason.  She was glad no one could see her.

They spoke a bit more that evening.  As usual, it was about nothing in particular.  But it felt special to Isla, more worthwhile than whatever else she’d been doing in the wasteland since waking.  Maybe even since before that.

-

A few months went by, and Isla started to daydream about old world food and clean sheets less and less.

The first harvest came in, and fresh carrots and ‘tatos’ were a revelation to the entire settlement.  The carrots had warped protuberances and the tato texture could only be described as truly, utterly disgusting.  Still, Isla enjoyed getting put on dinner duty.  In the time before, she’d been the primary housekeeper, what with Evelyn always working and Nate busy.  Something about the small labours of peeling, dicing, and stirring rang true for her; it was almost meditative in a way.  The constant, rote motions that gave you space to think, and the simple yet utterly essential results of prepping vegetables.

Isla turned a carrot around in her hands, wondering if it would be easier to cut the bulbous thing up first before peeling.

The day actually wasn’t so bad, as far as they went.  The sky a little less chartreuse, and more almost-sunny yellow.  She’d traded her knotted sweater for a threadbare t-shirt.  The circle around Sanctuary’s cul-de-sac looked a little fresher and more complete.  Sturges and his crew had done fine patching jobs.  The nearly-finished barrier fence wound around the perimeter of the settlement, and the brahmin that had been bought last week was settling down in its new pen.

It was early afternoon, and most people were at target practice or any of the hundreds of little jobs that were needed to keep them all going.  Isla, Cindy Cofran, and Mr. Cofran were starting on dinner in the lean-to built for the purpose underneath the cul-de-sac’s great tree.  They stood around a table, chopping ingredients while Mr. Cofran told Isla about the all-organic garden his family used to have.

Shelby sat in a chair propped against the tree trunk nearby and smoking idly.  Across the way, Russell was working on putting up line for electricity, and he would give Shelby a nasty look every now and then.  Since the chem money from the first batch had put the water purifier into working order, there was little anything anyone, including Russell, could say against Shelby and his penchant for avoiding physical labor like the plague.

But then, it wasn’t labor that Shelby was avoiding right now.  It was target practice.  Shelby’d gone to the first few lessons, enough to get the basics, and then skivved the rest.  By all rights, Isla should also be over the bridge and into the woods there where muffled shots could be heard with the handful of others.  But she hadn’t been to a single one, hadn’t even attempted to touch a firearm since first opening Nate’s safe.  And Evelyn had told Marcy and Russell to drop it when they pointed it out.

“The really great thing about the garden was having a way to reuse leftover food,” Mr. Cofran was saying. “Especially tuna surprise nights.”

“That’s what happened to the tuna?” Cindy gasped. “Dad, I actually liked that.”

“Well, you were the only one.”

Shelby whistled a cheerful tune.

“We should get a radio for up here,” he sighed. “Bit far, right, to tug the workshop one back and forth.”

“I’m sure that’s priority numero uno for Russell,” Cindy said, rolling her eyes.

Shelby shrugged and waved jauntily at the particularly sour look the self-proclaimed leader was giving him.

“Ever wonder why we all took up together?” he said.

They all glanced at him.  Isla wiped the neat little orange-brown diced rounds from the back of her blade into a tin with the others.

Shelby continued, “I mean, we walk outta that tin pit up there, and what made us all start up guard duty and mess rotation like a bunch of scouts?”

He leaned back further in his rickety chair, “Nothing was stopping us going our own ways.  Something very human about that, yeah?”

Mr. Cofran chuckled, “Sure, Socrates.  Mind putting the philosophy away long enough to get some water for us?”

“I would consider it a duty and a pleasure,” Shelby drawled.

He stood, stretching.

“Better go make sure he doesn’t wander off, Isla,” Cindy chirped.

Isla smiled and nodded at the younger girl.  She scooped up a pair of pails and tossed one to Shelby.  Together, they trailed down Sanctuary’s road, Shelby waxing on about humanity.

-

Zao peered through the glass separating the bridge from the main deck.  First Mate Li had wandered up from the area near the silo room that he usually shuffled around, up to the main deck.  Sometimes one of the mindless ones would shamble into a new room, but it was usually one directly adjacent to their usual locations.  Some never left their spots, and not a few seemed to sleep (if their prone forms were indeed ‘sleeping’) for the greater majority of years, decades.  The First Mate was not one of the ones that tended to move about.  In fact, Zao could not remember the last time he’d seen his second-in-command.

It was… startling.  The last time, Li’s skin had had a strange luminescence -- a soft radiance that was barely reflected in the Yangtze’s metal surfaces.  Now, the First Mate blazed with a sickish neon green, washing his path before him with nuclear light.

Li had been one of the first to lose himself.  Zao had not known him as long as some of the others; the First Mate had been foisted onto the Yangtze and its likely suicide mission at the last minute.  It was considered a sort of penance for Li, for some crime of disloyalty that Zao could not recall.  He did remember Li as a thoughtful sort, that cared about the crew and his relationships with them.

Now, though, the First Mate stared around listlessly, soullessly, and moved without purpose or meaning.  How had he come up this far into the boat, though?  Was there really no meaning to it?  Or--

Did they sense the disquiet in Zao?  The sudden change in him, the sudden discontentment with his persistent and endlessly static world?

Zao watched First Mate Li through the barrier of the glass between them.  They were not close, many yards apart infact, but still.  Zao had no reason to fear his crew.  But there was a part of him that was afraid of what they were, what they represented.  He had little to live for.  But he was still deeply afraid of becoming like the others.

So despite himself, Zao hesitated at the hatch leading to the main deck.  And the radio room could only be reached from the main deck.

He sighed.  He couldn’t waste anymore time.  Zao spun the hatch’s wheel, let it release its seals with quiet shifts in air pressure, and ducked his head into the next room.  He turned to watch the First Mate.  He seemed completely oblivious to Zao’s entrance.  His bare, emaciated, and glowing back was turned and his attention was on nothing in particular.  The room was long, as far as submarine bays go, and they were by no means close.

Zao forced himself to relax.  He had nothing to fear from the crew.  He was, after all, no longer human.

For a moment, he watched Li.  And then he walked away to enter the radio room.  He closed the hatch behind himself.

Sitting down at the cramped little work station, Zao flipped on the short-range.  The dial was now left almost always on the same frequency, so he didn’t touch it.  He pulled the transmitter toward himself, waiting a moment to hear if she got there first.  After a long stretch filled only with the murmur of the various auxiliary systems of the Yangtze and the distant and muffled press of the bay’s roar, Zao turned on the transmitter.

“Hello?” he said.

A moment.  And then--

“Hello,” the radio’s old speakers answered back.

He could tell by her voice, through the filter of the radio’s worn mechanisms and an unknown distance, that the one on the other end was distinctly feminine, probably young, had excellent English, and little else.  From her words, Zao felt he had come to know a bit more.  She was unfailingly polite, somewhat timid (especially when they first began speaking), and extremely easy to tease.

There was a couple of days where, just to introduce something new to their conversations that was as equally harmless as the weather, they had taken turns telling stories.  Nothing from personal experience, but childhood bedtime tales, interesting historical anecdotes, and the like.  When Zao started coming up with outrageous chronicles of Napolean or Genghis Khan and then laughed when she believed them, her voice had taken on a distinctive sullen reproach.

Four months of conversation -- and he knew it was that long since he began counting time again -- had led to an easy congeniality between them.  Their talks had a distinct rhythm now, lacking the missteps and overriding transmissions from the beginning.  They knew when the other was pausing to think and how long to wait before using the line.

Zao turned back to the present and to his transmitter.

“I have no news,” he said.

“I do,” she said. “We found a lead.  It’s promising.  Very promising.”

“That is good to hear,” he said, trying to convey that he meant it, too, in his tone.  He knew she had been worrying about it for a long time.

“Yes, well…” she said.

He frowned.  Something in her voice was different.  Clipped and charged with a hardness.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

A long pause, and he knew she was considering her answer.

“I am glad about this lead.  I’m really relieved.  Honest.  But there’s something-- something else unrelated.  And I’m-- I’m upset about it.”

She paused, then started again, “Actually.  I’m sorta angry about it.  My sister.  I learned something about her, and I’m angry with her and disappointed in her.”

“Ah,” Zao said.

She sometimes spoke of her sister, and of course her sister and nephew were the original reason for her using the radio.  He wondered about it.  Back then, there had been the one-child policy.  He wasn’t sure if she was talking about a sister by blood or not.  A ‘sister’ in English was a sister by blood, but…

“I know she’s going through a lot now, and she always protects and supports me,” she continued. “But I just… I just don’t understand it.”

He got the feeling that she wanted to say more, that she was struggling not to be specific.  It was too bad that their frequency wasn’t private or they didn’t use Chinese.  But their technology was limited, and he respected her request to use English.  And, despite her current obvious frustration, he was glad that she wanted to confide in him and that she had grown comfortable enough to say even this.

“You know,” Zao began. “Growing up, I did not have many _gege_ and _jiejie_.  But, I _do_ remember the day I found out my parents were humans, too.”

A pause.

“I guess you’re right,” she sighed. “She’s quite a few years older than me.  And I’ve always looked up to her a lot.  Sometimes I forget that she needs support, too.  I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to whine.”

“No,” he said quickly. “I do not mind at all.  I am happy that-- that you can talk to me.  Just…”  He trailed off, laughing self-consciously.

It was just the barrier of this radio communication.

“Yes.  I know… I know what you mean,” she said, her voice thin.

Yet another long pause.  And Zao had the feeling that wherever she was, she was the type of person that it took all she had to say those words: _I know what you mean_.  And she was rolling around in embarrassment now.  At that image, he hid his grin from no one at all behind a hand.

“Yes, well,” she said a bit squeakily. “I think I’ll leave early.  I’d like to talk to my sister.”

“Of course,” he said. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

-

“He’s name is Jim.”

Isla stared at Evelyn, then turned back to stare up at the massive machine which she’d only seen pictures of before.  In the recruitment materials and army advertisements before the war.

“He’s a ‘he,’” Isla said. “And he has a name.  And it’s Jim.”

“That’s right,” Evelyn said lightly, patting the metallic arm of the sentry bot.

The melon-sized steel ball serving as the head had slats through which a menacing red glow spilled from.  But it was dwarfed by the great bulk of steel limbs and the enormous torso, all of it whirring with a quietly contained energy that could spring at the lightest command into violence.  The head rotated with a metallic staccato and focused on Isla.

“Would you like a cup of tea, miss?” it said with a cultured masculine voice, refined and completely at odds with its body.

“Jim has an interesting personality protocol,” Evelyn chuckled.

Isla and Evelyn had resolved their differences a week ago.  Isla had found out that her sister had begun sleeping with that colonial frock, Hancock.  And Cait.  Isla had been angry that Nate’s grave hadn’t even grown cold (quite literally since they had yet to bury him), and yet her sister was out acting like he never existed.  Evelyn had tried to argue that it wasn’t serious, that it was just sex.  Which had made Isla even angrier.  She had said some unkind things to Evelyn.

In the end, though, Isla knew she couldn’t dictate her sister’s life.  She was… mourning in her own way.  It was upsetting, and Isla was deeply afraid that Evelyn and others would end up hurt.  But she couldn’t abandon her sister now, not when they both needed each other so much.

A week later, and things were mostly back to normal.  Well, it had been such an eventful week that it was hard to stay caught up in personal spats.  Evelyn hunted down the man that had killed Nate and took Shaun.  That giant steel blimp had streamed across the sky, announcing the Brotherhood’s entrance into the Commonwealth.  And Evelyn had ‘defeated’ someone calling themselves the Mechanist.  From _that_ escapade, she’d brought back a couple of robots to help guard Sanctuary.

Including Jim.

“Miss Evelyn,” Codsworth said, tone disgruntled and hovering nearby. “Not to rain on the parade, mum, but as combat utilities, the Sentry Bot is distinctly lacking in domestic skills.  Not to mention they are _RobCo_ creations!  Shoddy craftsmanship, won’t last the year, I’d wager.”

Codsworth’s digital voice sniffed.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” Jim said coolly. “But my previous engineer did install many high-grade components and materials onto my extremely durable galvanized steel frame.  And I have several programming modifications that allow for a great range of use.  With my missile launcher I can kill a dozen deathclaw broodmothers for you, and with my classic French cuisine protocols I can serve you a lovely hollandaise with their eggs.”

“Indeed!” Codsworth said, scandalized. “A dozen deathclaws, indeed!”

“Alright, alright,” Evelyn said. “Enough guys.  Take it outside or leave off already.”

“I would recommend ‘leaving off’ for the sir,” Jim said drily. “I am not equipped with remotely guided missiles, and so I would be unable to recall them by the time he calls ‘Uncle.’”

Codsworth sputtered, “Well, I _never_!”

“Codsworth, I’ve got some laundry crying for your attention,” Evelyn interjected loudly. “And I think I brought back a tin of coffee we would love for you to brew two cups from, Jim.”

“Of course, mum,” Codsworth sniffed, whirring off down the street.

“It would be my pleasure,” Jim said politely, rumbling off in the opposite direction.

Isla lowered the hand she’d hidden her grin behind as her sister shook her head and rolled her eyes.

“How could you, Ev?” Isla giggled. “Poor Codsworth.  You know how insecure he is.”

“Jeez, I know,” the Minutemen general said, smiling. “Remember when you first came here?  He was torn between treating you like another member of the house, and keeping you from doing the chores better than him.”

“I remember,” Isla smiled.

“To tell the truth,” Evelyn said quietly, stepping closer to her.  Her expression became more serious, her black eyes that could be hard as night diamonds softened as they considered Isla. “I brought the assualtron and the robobrain for Sanctuary.  Jim is for you.”

“Me?” she replied, surprised.

“Yeah.”

Her sister glanced away and considered the slow and tired activity of evening in the settlement.  The slipping of the sun over the horizon prevented any heavy labor, and it left with some retreating to early beds and others gathering around dim, crackling fires to chat quietly.  At the guard towers, the glow of laser muskets was becoming more and more distinct as darkness set in.

“I started thinking about things,” Evelyn continued. “After Kellogg.  I might not be around forever-- don’t make that face.  Just let me finish.  I’m already not around a lot.  I’d feel better if there was some guarantee for you.  You--”

She swallowed.  Carefully, she took Isla’s arm in her hand and squeezed lightly.

“You’re all I’ve got now, Isla.  I want you to be safe.”

Her eyes pricking, Isla placed her own hand over Evelyn’s and threaded their fingers together.  Really, she had it lucky.  It was Evelyn that went out day after day into that wasteland, risking her life and having to do the things that most were too squeamish or weak for.  It was Evelyn that had to bear the burden of the necessary evils required to survive and protect.  It was Evelyn that was surely suffering the most right now.

“ _Jie_ , things will be okay,” Isla murmured. “You’ll find Shaun.  Maybe he’ll be older, but that’s fine. We’ll work it out.  And I’m okay.  Sanctuary’s come a long way.”

Evelyn sighed and pulled her into a hug. “I know.  But all the same, just take the sentry bot and say thank you, okay?  I’m older and I know best.”

“Okay, okay.  Thanks.”

“Great.  I’ll get Nick to program the ownership to you and you alone.”

“Some people won’t be happy about that.”

“And I’m happy to tell them which asscheek to kiss.”

“Isn’t that Hancock’s job?”

“Hey,” Evelyn said, eyes narrowing.  She poked Isla in the side, right where it was ticklish. “Since when were you so sassy?”

“Since you started-- _whatever_ with someone your sister doesn’t like,” Isla said stubbornly.

“Oh yeah?  You were alright with him before you found out about me and the mayor.”

“That’s different.  You need someone that actually deserves you.”

“And who would that be?”

“Tall, dark, good-looking.  Rich, good family, healthy.  No emotional baggage, funny, supportive, worships the very ground you walk on.”

Evelyn laughed, “You’re describing a fairy tale prince.  Pre-war, too.  Turn-ons have changed, you know?  Great aim, excellent negotiating skills, and a patched up lean-to are more likely to be in the personals now.”

“Ugh, I don’t need to know about your Saturday nights.”

“Ha ha.  Go get that coffee from Jim for me.  I’ve done enough walking lately for all of us.”

Isla agreed with feigned annoyance.  She had the feeling that Evelyn wasn’t letting on about all her worries.  That she kept a lot to herself.  But Isla knew that’s the way her sister had always been.  Always the epitome of type-a, always planning three steps ahead, and always taking control with a white-knuckled grip.  Making her laugh and accepting a gift was the least Isla could do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading~


End file.
